With an offset in a case study of knowledge workers in a global industrial engineering corporation the rhetorical situation for knowledge sharing is described and discussed. In the case study a new portal system is to be introduced and knowledge workers are to be given the task of innovating and maintaining business processes, thus contributing with content in an internal online environment. Qualitative data was gathered and an analysis revealed that there are many good reasons why sharing would not occur with the current setup.
Kristian Torning works as a researcher for The Danfoss Group, where he is investigating how rhetorical communication theory can be applied when designing interactive computer systems. Kristian's work is concerned with the situation for knowledge sharing in globally dispersed corporations and how we might design systems that would persuade a larger degree of sharing. He is a visiting researcher at Stanford's H-STAR institute in Q4 2008.
Kristian has a background in interaction design: He has worked designing adaptive eye input interfaces using classical HCI models, he has worked in new media broadcasting producing online communities and he has worked designing mobile business solutions for Microsoft Dynamics.